Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/354

 340 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

expansion engines and triple screws, why Moses did not shoot down Pharaoh's soldiers with rapid-fire guns, why we have no pho- tographs of Solomon and his court, is primarily that these people had not sufficiently observed and thought through the facts of nature and the wants of men. We have ten thousand comforts that antiquity did not enjoy, simply because we have the results of ten thousand times as much knowledge of the resources of life as antiquity commanded. These truisms are indexes of the con- ditions we are now considering. Specifically, the economic actions of men are conditioned by the knowledge and the knowl- edge-desires of themselves and other men. Perhaps the illustra- tion that most readily suggests itself to American minds is the case of Catholic Europe in the fifteenth century. Europeans were as greedy of gain and as eager for adventure as they have ever been. They were crowding upon each other, and were anxious to find new sources of wealth. Mexico and Peru were rich enough to create greed if it had never existed. The ocean washed European shores just as it does now, The trade winds blew the same favoring gales. Sun and moon and stars were the same safe guides to the sailor's path. Why were this and that not put together ? Primarily because the state of knowl- edge in Europe prohibited a breaking out of the bounds of the known world. Men did not dare to trust the compass. They had not yet invented quadrant or sextant. But, more than all, the theologians dominated men's minds with warnings that it was heresy to explore for regions unknown to ecclesiastical cos- mology. The Genoese sailor who at last summoned effrontery enough to believe in western exploration had to contend more desperately against biblical texts and monkish interpretations than against economic obstructions. Indeed, in all the dealings between more and less enlightened peoples, from the beginning to the present moment, the status of knowledge in each party has conditioned the economic activities of the other. The aborigines' ignorance of relative values has been the temporary spur to adventure. Ignorance of natural resources or of means of utilizing them has in a thousand ways modified economic action. Ignorance of the traditions of peoples has resulted in